


When in Orlais

by Penknife



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27125119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: Dorian has a clever plan to get his hands on a coveted ball invitation. It's possible that he's too clever for his own good.
Relationships: Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 12
Kudos: 98
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	When in Orlais

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SouthernContinentSkies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernContinentSkies/gifts).



"If anyone can get me an invitation to the Marquis's harvest ball, I'm certain you can," Dorian said, leaning one hip on Josephine's desk and exercising every particle of charm that he possessed. "I'm simply consumed with the desire to do my part for Inquisition diplomacy." As well as with the desire to get out of Skyhold—scenic, remote, freezing Skyhold—and attend at least one fashionable party that didn't end in stabbings.

"Yes," Josephine said, putting several syllables worth of skepticism in the word. "This isn't a large celebration. It's a small ball for the Marquis's personal acquaintances. And the Marquis has made a personal request naming the representative he would like us to send."

"Am I being upstaged by the Inquisitor? Is having the Herald of Andraste attend one's fashionable party really better than having me?"

"You should know the answer to that," Josephine said, and then, catching sight of someone behind him, "Commander Cullen, please, if you have a moment—"

Cullen stopped dead, having apparently been passing through on his way to the war room. "I have to … go review the … troops," Cullen said, and turned on his heel to retreat briskly the way he had come.

"Commander! You can run, but you cannot hide!" Josephine waved an engraved invitation, the very same one that Dorian had been trying to extract from her with such limited success.

It occurred to Dorian that there was more than one avenue of attack open to him. "Never mind, it was all just a passing thought," he said, and went in pursuit of Cullen.

He caught up to the man on the walkway to the battlements. "You do have an impressive turn of speed on you, considering all that armor you wear."

"I don't know what you're …" Cullen began, and then shook his head and made a wry face. "It's probably hopeless. She's determined that I must attend this horrible Orlesian ball and be swarmed by people who think I'm eligible." He said the last word like it were a particularly unpleasant social disease.

"While some of us would kill for an invitation. The world is notably unfair."

Cullen looked speculative. "In that case, I can think of a potential solution to our problems."

"Believe me, I am all ears," Dorian purred. All he needed was for Cullen to accept the invitation and convey it to him. Dorian could make all required explanations that since the dear Commander had been unfortunately detained, he had sent Dorian in his place, as a show of … well, mage/Templar cooperation, or something else equally high-minded.

"I'll go to this thing if you'll attend as my escort."

"You mean, of course," Dorian began, and then couldn't think of a way to finish the sentence that seemed plausible at all.

"I mean go to this thing with me, dance with me if I absolutely must dance, and make it clear that I'm taken, so that I won't have to beat Orlesian nobles off with a stick."

"My dear Commander," Dorian said, although the mental images produced were making it a bit hard to organize his thoughts. "It can't possibly be worth it to you to give the impression that you're having an illicit affair in order to frighten off potential suitors."

"This is Orlais. It wouldn't be illicit." Cullen frowned. "I understand they do things differently in Tevinter. If you're worried about your reputation …"

Dorian's father would be unspeakably mortified. The fact lent the idea additional charm. "It's not _my_ reputation I'm concerned about."

"No one can seriously believe that I'm under the sway of Tevinter," Cullen said. "We've been fighting Venatori for a year and a half." It was, actually, possible that was the worst potential effect on Cullen's reputation that the man could imagine. It made Dorian feel extremely far from home. That was not necessarily a bad thing.

"Wonderful, we should definitely do this," Dorian said, because he was habitually terrible at choosing obviously sensible courses of action over fascinating disasters. "What are you wearing?"

"My dress uniform, I suppose," Cullen said. "That's why we have them."

"The color does nothing for you," he pointed out, although from what he knew of Cullen's wardrobe, that or armor were the only conceivable choices, and it was difficult to dance in armor.

"Everyone with any sense will be looking at you."

"I do make an impression," Dorian agreed, and went off to investigate his own wardrobe for something he could be scandalous in.

*****

Their guest rooms were adjoining, with a door between, but only Dorian's had a mirror, which meant he was treated to the sight of Cullen finishing dressing and taming his hair while Dorian lounged and admired. Admiring was all he felt he was likely to get to do, the Commander having been impervious to everyone's charms as far as Dorian knew, but there was a great deal to admire. The trousers were, perhaps, a bit tight, but the effect produced was salutary.

"Now that we're here, I could skip the actual ball," Cullen said.

"Josephine would murder you. Or at least she would complain to Leliana, and then Leliana would murder you."

"Not until I got back to Skyhold, though."

Dorian considered Cullen in the light of something other than a fashion critique. "You really don't like these events."

"I dislike Orlesians."

"Everyone dislikes Orlesians, even the Orlesians."

"Yes, I think that's my point. And I dislike feeling hunted." Cullen rolled his shoulders, as if trying to shrug away tension, and Dorian was possessed by the inadvisable desire to sidle up to him and offer to massage the knots away. That was precisely the sort of pass Cullen had just said he was trying to avoid, and besides, the point of this exercise was to be demonstrative in public.

"Shall I be terribly possessive and look daggers at potential rivals?"

"You'd be doing me a tremendous favor."

Actually doing so was harder than Dorian expected. It was easy to flirt when it could be taken as a joke. Flirting when it was intended to be taken seriously was more unnerving, although Dorian reminded himself it was still a game. It was simply that the joke was one that he and Cullen shared, and that the Orlesian nobles who made disappointed faces behind their masks did not.

Dorian felt that he had the situation under control until the dancing began. It would have been abysmally rude to sit out every dance, as Cullen eventually granted.

"I don't really dance," Cullen said, leading Dorian out onto the floor, and then proceeded to turn him perfectly competently through the measures. Around them, skirts swirled, glittering masks caught the light, and heads turned to watch them.

If Dorian's heart was pounding, he told himself, it wasn't nerves. He was the master of situations far more alarming than an Orlesian country ball. It also certainly wasn't any sort of unexpectedly satisfied desire for this kind of romantic display, because he was not, he told himself, a romantic.

No, it had to be the fact that he was inches away from an infernally attractive man who had one arm around Dorian's waist, and who kept grazing Dorian's body with his own as they moved. It was not remotely possible to satisfy his desire to climb the man like a tree and grind his hips against the man's horrible scarlet wool jacket front. It was, he was increasingly aware, going to be impossible to satisfy any desire this evening provoked.

It was something of a relief when the set ended, although Dorian's own trousers felt tighter than they had when the evening began. He led the way into the lee of the refreshment table, hoping to fight his way through the crowd for a salutary drink, and several masked Orlesians appeared as if out of nowhere.

"You must save me the next dance," one of them said, and drew her fan down Cullen's shoulder.

"I am so terribly sorry, but the Commander promised he'd show me the gardens," Dorian said.

"Of course," the woman said, lifting her fan. "I envy you."

"When you say 'show you the gardens,'" Cullen said as they escaped through the glass doors into the lamp-lit meandering paths of the courtyard.

"I certainly assume that's a euphemism for sex here, too."

"Then we'd better not be seen in plain sight."

Dorian retreated into the shelter of an archway that was heavily shadowed. "This seems appropriately private."

"It does, doesn't it?" Cullen said, and pushed Dorian back hard against the wall to kiss him.

For a moment, Dorian's impulse was to push back out of sheer bafflement, and then his better judgment reasserted itself, and he allowed himself to savor the experience. "I didn't think we were taking the pretense this far," he managed. His pulse was beating in his throat.

"What are we pretending?"

It occurred to Dorian rather alarmingly that when Cullen asked Dorian to escort him to the party, he might have, in fact, been asking Dorian to _escort him to the party_. He would have said yes, of course. Certainly. Probably. The event was outside his experience.

Being kissed was not, and Cullen returned to kissing him, thoroughly and with a suppressed hunger that suggested he hadn't been unmoved by the dancing, either. "Alone with a scandalous Tevinter mage. Do you think that's quite safe?"

For an answer, Cullen caught Dorian's wrists and pinned him back against the wall. "Are you certain _you're_ safe?"

Dorian was, in fact, quite certain that Cullen might want to fuck him senseless, but didn't actually want to see him hurt. All the same, there was an added spice to playing this game with a Templar who'd once had mages at his actual mercy, even if Dorian was also quite certain Cullen hadn't taken advantage. "Which answer will persuade you to carry on?"

"You want this," Cullen said, grinding his hips against Dorian's.

"I doubt I could be more clear about that, short of taking out an advertisement."

"I want …" Cullen began, his mouth working against Dorian's jaw, and then he let out a hot breath against Dorian's skin. "Too many things."

"From a scandalous Tevinter mage."

"From you," Cullen said, and slid down to his knees. This was a position Dorian had rather expected to wind up in himself, having given some thought to how those callused hands would feel tangled in his hair, but pressed back against the wall with Cullen's hands gripping his thighs, he didn't feel the lack of a firm hand.

Cullen unfastened Dorian's trousers, and it was all Dorian could do to make the ensuing experience last more than thirty seconds. It felt so wrong, and so right, and he had to bite his lip not to make too much noise. If any Orlesian nobles appeared and spoiled the mood, Dorian felt few punishments too severe for them.

At last he couldn't hold back. He shuddered and arched into Cullen's hands and came, a shatteringly satisfying climax. "I'm happy to return the favor," he managed, though he felt fairly breathless.

"I'm not sure I can wait," Cullen said, and fumbled at his belt. Dorian tugged the man up from his knees, undid his trousers for him, and took him well in hand. Cullen also seemed to know how to be quiet, though his breaths came harsh and gasping against Dorian's ear.

Cullen groaned, and spilled himself across the flagstones, and then leaned off-balance against Dorian, as if abruptly shaky on his feet. Dorian steadied him with a kiss, long and lingering this time. It seemed to work.

"My dear Commander, I had no idea."

"I thought that I was making my interest clear."

"Would you care to make it clear again? Perhaps in the general vicinity of a bed?"

"What about the party?"

"We've put in an appearance. You dutifully danced. I haven't made any additional mortal enemies, that I know of. Josephine will have to take that as a success."

"I'll have to thank her for the invitation," Cullen said. "She'll be smug."

"Those are the risks you run."

"And the risks you run?" Cullen said. Dorian felt that his reputation in Tevinter was probably beyond damaging, at this point. He also felt it unlikely that Cullen would deliberately crush his heart into tiny pieces. The chances that his heart would nevertheless end up crushed seemed relatively high.

"I thrive on danger," Dorian said, and gestured for Cullen to lead the way.


End file.
